Technical details

DAO (Data Access Objects) is a library of routines that is used to expose objects in Microsoft Access. DAO is installed as a part of Microsoft Office, and the error message means that there is a problem with the installation on your computer.

This installation error will cause problems when answering certain In-Application questions in Access. You can have this error and Access may still function normally when used for other tasks. That is because the DAO interface is only used in certain situations, and one of those is when you automate office using COM.

The problem may be caused by some other software program that is currently installed or has been installed at some point in time on this computer. We have seen reports from a few customers using Corel Draw X3 or X4, and in one case they verified that it was after installing this software that the registry became incorrect. But we have not yet verified this ourselves.

The cause of the problem seems to be that an older DAO version (3.5x) is installed and replaces certain registry keys that were installed by the DAO that Office uses (3.60), but the .dll file for DAO 3.5 is not installed. We therefore believe that the order you install your programs in may be important and that installing office last may correct this.

The Interface entry points to the TypeLib entry, and also includes a Version value. The Version is simply the version of the typelib that will be used. Below the TypeLib entry you will typically have two versions listed when you have this error, both 4.0 and 5.0 and the Interface lists version 4.0.

Symptoms

In TypeLib\{00025E01-...}\5.0\0\win32 there is a reference to dao360.dll

In TypeLib\{00025E01-...}\4.0\0\win32 there is a reference to dao351.dll.

If you examine the paths to both of these, only one .dll file is actually on the computer.

The correct fix is believed to be a re-installation of the computer or maybe it is enough to install DAO 3.60 separately.

Possible Solutions:

Reinstall the dao360.dll using the regsvr32 command from a command line. This is known to correct some issues with an incorrect or missing Interface key.Open a command prompt and type the path found in the registry key above, for example:

Re-install the computer, but install office as the last program and/or verify after installing each program that no additional versions are created below the TypeLib\{00025E01-...}\ registry key.

Change TypeLib\{00025E01-...}\4.0\0\win32 to point to the dao360.dll.That may work for Office but may stop other things from working instead.

Change the Version value to 5.0 in Interface\{0000000A-0000-0010-8000-00AA006D2EA4}\TypeLib.Permissions in some Windows versions may prevent you from changing this easily.

If you have this problem we are interested in hearing from you.

We would like to hear from you since it is difficult for us to test these solutions. We are also interested to hear if you resolved the issue, which of the solutions you tested and which ones worked for you.